Agatha Castagneri Keenan

Agatha Castagneri Keenan of Thorsby, Alabama, passed away peacefully at her home on October 30, 2024. She was 100 years old. Miss Cass, as she was affectionally known, was born on June 25, 1924 in Caffasse, Italy. She immigrated to America as a child with her mother and was processed through Ellis Island. They settled with her father, a coal miner, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Growing up as poor immigrates during the depression was hard, harder still when her father died in a car accident, leaving Miss Cass, the oldest of four children to help her mother raise and provide for the family. She was ten years old. She taught her mother to speak and read English in the evenings after school.

            She was educated through a federal program that provided an RN degree to women who were willing to serve during WWII after their graduation. She graduated from the University of West Virginia’s nursing program in 1946, missing the end of the war. She married Eugene Patrick Keenan on February 19, 1949 in Morgantown, West Virginia.   

            They had a wonderful life traveling the country and world, before permanently settling in Thorsby, Alabama in 1979. Miss Cass was a long time member of Thorsby First Baptist Church, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels, was a member of the Thorsby Historic Preservation Association and worked for years as a Pink Lady volunteer at Clanton Hospital.

            Miss Cass is survived by her five children, Eugene Patrick Keenan, Jr.; Vicky (Glenn) Butts, Mary (Stuart) McAllister, Kevin Keenan, and Becky (Marc) Edge; seven grandchildren; Cameron (Heather) McAllister, Katherine (Kevin) Le, Angie Keenan, Nathan Keenan, Erin Young, Katie (Dustin) Kennedy and Marc, Jr. (Barrett); and five great grandchildren, Dylan and Olivia McAllister, Max, Jack, Kit and coming baby boy Kennedy. She is truly one of the last of the Greatest Generation. We are honored to be her children. Miss Cass’s service will be private.